So I have a little free time after having spent a while continuing to pack up my house. I’m moving into a new one soon! 🙂 I’ve decided to do a linkage post first, and if there’s still some time, see if I can write something else.

Renee at Womanist Musings has a post about the racist new Nadya Suleman Halloween costume sweeping the nation… Racialicious has a post on Anita Tedaldi’s privilege showing with regards to her former adopted child. Jenn at Reappropriate wrote about some positive developments between President Obama and the Asian-American/Pacific Islander community.

And speaking of the tiniest violin on earth playing the background, Rush Limbaugh got his widdle heart bwoken over his being cut from the group interested in buying the St. Louis Rams after an outcry was raised over his notorious racism (especially towards Black athletes). Think Progress has the scoop.

First off a couple of links sure to give you a chuckle. Christian Liberal is back to posting, and he points out that John Boehner kind of resembles Howdy Doody. Blue Gal also points out that Cindy McCain and the latest Mrs. Newt Gingrich kind of look like each other too.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars’ Mike Finnegan: Opus Dei declares war on moderate Catholic clergy and the Obama Administration. Meanwhile, Blind in Texas has an important question for Evangelicals and other religious wingnuts on the question of torture.

Marcella of abyss2hope writes about a report on rape and sexual violence in Minnesota, and has some suggestions for Minnesota and all of us on how to stop rape. Tobes writes about something very interesting. It seems Dane Cook had a rare moment of awareness and spoke out about wrong it is to throw the word “rape” around gratuitiously, and how the experiences of rape survivors are *nothing* like losing at a video game, and throwing the word around will rightfully offend survivors.

Arrrrrrgh! HuffPo reported that a judge ruled that Gitmo detainees can be held indefinitely.

Double Arrrrgh! Crooks and Liars report that the banking industry is rushing to repay TARP funds so prevent government regulation stepping in.

Women’s Glib has a poem about how we women will never measure up to impossible beauty standards. Cara has a post discussing a misogynist tabloid cover that took an especially vicious umbrage towards Uma Thurman’s body. And Renee wrote about a 75 year old woman in the news right now for getting a vaginoplasty, and talked about what that means to all women.

Feministe has a link and a little comment about the reports Rumsfeld’s office sent to GWB that played up an evangelical view of the Iraq War.

Speaking of war, Think Progress reports that we’ve lost another great member of our military to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. *sigh*

Jonathan Turley reports on a study that showed that some of the happiest people are older Republican men. I am thinking “well duh,” since they benefit from the oppresion of the rest of us!

Susie from Suburban Guerilla reported on Karen Hughes’ sudden announcement that she was opposed to the Bush Administration’s torture policy the whole time. MOMocrats debate the torture photos issue.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Governor Schwarznegger’s propositions all failed at the voting booth. h/t to Tequila, who comments at Crooks and Liars. 😉

RH Reality Check posted a roundup of links, including an article on the abortion rights aspect of the Supreme Court nominee fight.

Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, as many people know quite well by now, has taken heat for her response to Perez Hilton’s question about whether she supports gay marriage.

It’s this following part of her response that has left me, as a bisexual woman, with a nasty taste in my mouth. Prejean said:

We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman.

I hate to break it to you, Carrie, but while GLBT Americans may not be a part of your family, we *are* a part of this country. The USA does not revolve around you, and your prejudices. I imagine you may be among those who pride themselves for “loving the troops.” How then, do you feel when I tell you that an estimated 650,000 gay veterans of World War II have lived in a country where their brave and valuable service to this country in its time of crisis counted for nothing, and they did not have many of the same rights other WWII military men had upon their return, including marriage equality?

I’m guessing you may not have a reaction, simply because you probably had no idea that the GLBT community served its country bravely and honorably, and despite Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, still continues to till this very day.

As someone who was close to wearing the crown of Miss USA, you must realize that you are representing a vast group of Americans, including the GLBT community. No one has the right to dictate to you what your views on marriage equality are, no matter how bigotted and wrong-headed they may be, but you certainly could have answered the question a thousand times more graciously and gracefully than the alienating manner in which you did.

I hope that you realize these things before you step on the toes of your fellow Americans, who were defending their beliefs and principles long before you and I were even in diapers. Please rethink your shameful wording of your opinions.

Till then, I must say that as a lifelong Californian, and ex-evangelical, I won’t have a Miss California USA who I can be proud represents me until at least 2010.

Annaleigh W., the Small-Town Elitist, who will not give her full identity, simply because I don’t have the same rights as Carrie, including basic safety if my bisexuality were known by my neighbors.

The blogger at kmareka.com speculates that the reason Wasilla and Palin charged rape victims for their own rape kits may have been an insidious attempt to discourage getting the kits done so that the women would not have access to emergency contraception.

MOMocrats compare the educational history of the major presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Latoya at Racialicious compares Sarah Palin and Condoleeza Rice in a respectful but critical manner. I enjoyed this post!

Reappropriate has a post about the Republican party’s sudden and hypocritical “embrace” of feminism.

Season of the Bitch critiques Saturday Night Live’s sketch with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.

Speaking Out has an awful story about a comatose woman who was raped by her husband.

Today’s Linkage:

Marcella at abyss2hope writes about how the issue of rape is affecting an Oregon senate race.

Crooks and Liars reported on a vicious attack against the women who were part of the Alaska women’s rally against Sarah Palin. A conservative talk radio host called the women “maggots” and gave the women’s home addresses over the air.

Crooks and Liars writes about how GOP concern over Hurricane Gustav was a sham, and the treatment of Hurricane Ike by the Republican Party proves it.

Rachel writes about the lack of diversity amongst television political pundits. She also makes the intriguing observation that when we see African-American or Latino pundits, they tend to be conservative…

Feministe offers up some truthiness to combat the McCain campaign’s lies.

I wanted to acknowledge that within a recent period of time, within the last 3 weeks or so, there has been a large amount of civilian casualities in both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of “airstrikes gone wrong,” so to speak. Most of these causalties appear to have been children.

These are lands that have had so much turmoil, and then we’ve come in and added to the suffering… And our government is so intent on hiding from us the true costs of our involvement/interference in other countries, that I doubt we ourselves will know the true impact of our invading Afghanistan, and Iraq as well.

I don’t have anything to suggest, but I do think that it was important for me to have the people Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq not far in my mind on Thursday as I remembered the attack on our soil…

I hope to get this post done quickly, I’m making up for the day off I took yesterday, and today I have been kind of glued to the television due to Hurricane Ike. I have plenty of family as well as friends in Southeast Texas, so naturally I’m concerned…

Anyway, yesterday’s intended linkage:

Marcella at abyss2hope talks about the development of her website. When it’s through it will educate people on date rape and other forms of sexual assault. Keep an eye out for it!

Crooks and Liars has a post on how the Bush Administration has cynically used 9/11 and the shadow of Bin Laden to their political advantage.

Feministe has an excellent post on certain feminists’ unwillingness to include considerations of race and class in their discussions of feminism.

I don’t have many words on this post from MOMocrats. Basically it includes a video of John McCain being a jerk to a woman representing a POW/MIA advocacy group… *shakes head*

Racialicious has a post about the theft of intellectual property from Asian-American website owner Myles Valentin by one of his so-called friends. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Hey everybody, I am backed up on my linkage post, so I will try to get through everything quickly. And after that I probably ought to upgrade my browser because frequently when I try to drop in on Crooks and Liars, it crashes! 😦

Ok, here goes:

Yesterday’s intended post

A Christian Liberal Perspective has a post on Bob Woodward’s new book which has some shocking comments from Dubya.

Feministe has an important post everyone should see. Get a load of this, when Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, rape victims were required to pay for their own rape kits (collection of forensic evidence). This happens in other places, but we are focusing on Palin’s record here. She probably could have done something about this, but didn’t. Why does Palin hate women?

MOMocrats has an awesome guest posting from a 96 year old grandma who talks about what it was like to vote for the first time 75 years ago, and reminds all of us that we need to get our butts to the polls!

The blogger at Season of the Bitch adds her thoughts to Little Light’s post about the police state.

Today’s linkage

Marcella at abyss2hope expounds on where the anti-choice arguement that great people in our society are sometimes born as the result of rape winds up.

Crooks and Liars has a post on this yucky Faux News “analyst’s” homophobic remarks against the awesome Rachel Maddow.

There’s a thoughtful post at Feministe urging lipstick feminists to be conscious of where we get our clothing, accessories, and beauty products from. We might be adding to the suffering of other women, or to animals.

This one’s for the barf bag: MOMocrats has a video clip of Meghan McCain callously insisting that no one knows the impact of the war like her family does. How ’bout we start with the families of the 4000+ people of our military who’ve been killed in Iraq, shall we Meghan? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! I should note that the MOMocrats have added their personal and powerful responses to Meghan’s boneheaded comment.

Natalia Antonova has a great and snark-filled response to the idiot who tried to derail her powerful post on the trafficking of Russian women with a whine about Russian “mail-order brides” who leave the Americans they marry…

Racialicious has a guest post from Angry Asian Man about racial stereotypes in the new TV show “Samurai Girl.”

And finally, A Christian Liberal Perspective has an excellent post on Christian fundamentalists trying to spread “democracy.”